I write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

If you don't expect to like someone and then you do, that's an incredibly exciting moment.

Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.

My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.

Sherlock Holmes can be wise and funny. He wasn't, at the beginning. But later on, he's got a bantering relationship with loads of people. He's got a wisdom that he didn't have in the early stage. But he stays on the mountain top, and he will die up there. He's not going to change that.

Rule 1: The Doctor lies.

So is this how it works Doctor? You never interfere with the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there are children crying?